Blog post 4 on hungry planet paper
For my paper, I chose images 16 and 18 with a Guatemalan family and an English family. The main difference between the two was that the English family had a diet high in processed food, but had variety, almost nothing was purchased in bulk. For the Guatemalan family, they had a diet high in whole foods, with fewer items overall but many items were purchased in large quantities.
If we look at the diets the way Pollan would we can see that the whole foods in the Guatemalan family diet is likely to be much healthier than the highly processed English diet. Also, if we look at the amount of money each family spends on food we find that the English family spends $63 per person while the Guatemalan family spends about $11 per person. However, if we compare the GDP per capita of the two countries we see Guatemala at $4,146 and England at almost 40K (World Bank). This means that the Guatemalan family is likely to be paying more of their total income on food than the English family, which is another point Pollan would agree with.
However, the English family still has more diversity on their table. Perhaps that diversity is more valuable than the whole foods present on the table of the Guatemalan family? Most likely not, because the English family likely gets their food from a supermarket, they will likely be eating the same food year-round. While the Guatemalan family is more likely to get their food locally, therefore their food is subject to seasonal change. If we take another family photo again in six months it is likely that the English photo would stay mostly the same while the Guatemalan photo would contain different foods and look markedly different. Which all comes together to show that the Guatemalan family is likely to be eating a more diverse and whole foods centric diet, which Pollan would say is key to a healthy diet.
“GDP per Capita (current US$).” GDP per Capita (current US$) | Data. World Bank, n.d. Web. 27 July 2017.
Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food : an Eater&Apos;s Manifesto. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2009.